Interviews are the most vital piece of the hiring process. Get it right and you get the job pending references and teacher licensing verification. Get it wrong and you come away feeling you will never land your dream job and subsequent interviews get more challenging. Nerves are harder to manage, making it harder to be the true you. At worst, words do not come out right; you mix Marzano up with Bloom and everything you wanted to say you didn’t.
In this article we answer the question:
How can I prepare to not only get the teaching job but enjoy the interview experience?
Tell Your Stories
Storytelling outdoes theorising and/or hypothetical responses. In other words – what you have done is more colourful than what you would do. Interviews are personal – a getting-to-know you for both sides. Schools want to know if you are fit for the teacher recruitment job and their organisation, but they want to do so by seeing the authentic version of you. It is easy to be you when telling your true stories.
To start, decide what stories you want to tell. This can be tricky, but if you are a trained and experienced teacher, there is fairly good chance you will know the key areas a school covers in interview. Here are examples that come up in most teaching interviews:
• Behaviour management strategies/examples
• Curriculum standards and aligned lessons
• Collaboration and Teamwork
• School specific – Faith questions, teaching all boys/girls etc
• The most positive lesson you have taught
• The most challenging experience you have had – how you overcame this
• Involvement in the wider community
For each topic, think of your best example that shows your skills in this space. Recollect and retell it to yourself. If confident, give the story a title and do a mapping exercise. To learn how to complete a mapping exercise and read the rest of our in-depth guide to the teacher interview, download our eBook below: